New York, N.Y., Nov. 11, 2009 — Experian® Hitwise® announced today that Google accounted for 70.60 percent of all U.S. searches conducted in the four weeks ending Oct. 31, 2009. Yahoo! Search, Bing and Ask.com received 16.14 percent, 9.57 percent and 2.62 percent, respectively. The remaining 52 search engines in the Hitwise Search Engine Analysis Tool accounted for 1.10 percent of U.S. searches.
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Percentage of U.S. searches among leading search engine providers | |||
| Domain | September 2009 | October 2009 | Month-over-month percent change |
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www.google.com |
71.08% | 70.60% | -1% |
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search.yahoo.com |
16.38% | 16.14% | -1% |
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www.bing.com* |
8.96% | 9.57% | 7% |
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www.ask.com |
2.56% | 2.62% | 2% |
| Note: Data is based on four-week rolling periods (ending Oct. 31, 2009, and Oct. 3, 2009) from the Hitwise sample of 10 million U.S. Internet users. | |||
| *This includes executed searches on Bing.com, Live.com and MSN Search but does not include searches on Club.Live.com. | |||
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Source: Experian Hitwise | |||
Longer searches increase this past month
Longer search queries, averaging searches of five to more than eight words in length, increased 3 percent between October and September 2009. Searches of eight or more words increased 4 percent. The same time period showed that shorter search queries — those averaging one to four words long — decreased 1 percent from month to month. Searches of one word comprised the majority of searches, amounting to 24.03 percent of all queries.
Google is a greater source of traffic to key U.S. industries
Comparing October 2009 with October 2008, Automotive, Business and Finance, Entertainment, News and Media, Online Video, Social Networking and Sports categories showed double-digit increases in their share of traffic coming directly from search engines.
Percentage of U.S. clicks by number of keywords | |||
| Subject | September 2009 | October 2009 | Month-over-month percent change |
| One word | 24.32% | 24.03% | -1% |
| Two words | 23.55% | 23.13% | -2% |
| Three words | 20.52% | 20.53% | 0% |
| Four words | 13.69% | 13.83% | 1% |
| Five words | 7.94% | 8.13% | 2% |
| Six words | 4.30% | 4.42% | 3% |
| Seven words | 2.33% | 2.43% | 4% |
| Eight or more words | 3.35% | 3.49% | 4% |
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Note: Data is based on four-week rolling periods (ending Oct. 31, 2009, and Oct. 3, 2009) from the Hitwise sample of 10 million U.S. Internet users. | |||
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Source: Experian Hitwise | |||
About Experian Hitwise
Experian Hitwise is the leading online competitive intelligence service. Experian Hitwise gives marketers a competitive advantage by providing daily insights on how 25 million Internet users around the world interact with more than 1 million Websites. This external view helps companies grow and protect their businesses by identifying threats and opportunities as they develop. Experian Hitwise has more than 1,500 clients across numerous sectors, including financial services, media, travel and retail.
Experian Hitwise (FTS:EXPN), www.experianplc.com, operates in the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, Singapore, Canada and Brazil. More information about Experian Hitwise is available at www.hitwise.com.
| U.S. category upstream traffic from search engines and Google — October 2009 | ||||
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Category |
Percentage of category traffic from search engines — October 2009 | Percent change in share of traffic from search engines — October 2008– October 2009 | Percentage of category traffic from Google — October 2009 | Percent change in share of traffic from Google — October 2008– October 2009 |
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Automotive |
30.21% | 18% | 21.22% | 19% |
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Business and Finance |
22.17% | 19% | 15.63% | 21% |
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Entertainment |
28.55% | 21% | 19.37% | 20% |
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Health and Medical |
42.72% | -5% | 30.98% | -3% |
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News and Media |
25.43% | 22% | 17.24% | 14% |
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Online Video** |
36.21% | 12% | 25.75% | 9% |
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Shopping and Classifieds |
27.27% | 8% | 19.06% | 9% |
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Social Networking** |
20.53% | 11% | 13.86% | 13% |
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Sports |
16.30% | 36% | 11.38% | 35% |
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Travel |
38.48% | 8% | 28.81% | 9% |
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Note: All figures are based on U.S. data from the Hitwise sample of 10 million Internet users. | ||||
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Source: Experian Hitwise | ||||
For up-to-date analysis of online trends, please visit the Hitwise Research Blog at www.ilovedata.com and Hitwise Data Center at www.hitwise.com/datacenter.
About Experian
Experian is the leading global information services company, providing data and analytical tools to clients in more than 65 countries. The company helps businesses to manage credit risk, prevent fraud, target marketing offers and automate decision making. Experian also helps individuals to check their credit report and credit score and protect against identity theft.
Experian plc is listed on the London Stock Exchange (EXPN) and is a constituent of the FTSE 100 index. Total revenue for the year ended March 31, 2009, was $3.9 billion. Experian employs approximately 15,000 people in 40 countries and has its corporate headquarters in Dublin, Ireland, with operational headquarters in Nottingham, UK; Costa Mesa, California; and São Paulo, Brazil.
For more information, visit www.experianplc.com.
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Contact:
Matt Tatham
Experian Hitwise
1 212 380 2939 Telephone